Rosa Prince
London Telegraph
July 12, 2010

Carne Ross, who was First Secretary responsible for the Middle East at the United Nations, accused the former government of issuing “lies” to the public about the dictator’s capacity to launch weapons of mass destruction.

A d v e r t i s e m e n t
He said that it was a “disgrace” that ministers failed to exhaust all peaceful options before going to war against Iraq.

“There was no deliberate discussion of available alternatives to military action in advance of the 2003 invasion,” Mr Ross added.

“There is no record of that discussion, no official has referred to it, no minister has talked about it, and that seems to me to be a very egregious absence in this history – that at some point a Government before going to war should stop and ask itself, ‘are there available alternatives?”‘

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/7885629/Iraq-inquiry-Government-intentionally-and-substantially-exaggerated-WMD-threat.html